Roi de Reine
by The Very Last Valkyrie
Summary: Home is subjective. Love is not.


**Roi de Reine  
**

'_I hear the wind call your name _  
_ The sound that leads me home again _  
_ It sparks up the fire_  
_A flame that still burns _  
_ Oh, it's to you  
I will always return._'  
- I Will Always Return, Bryan Adams.

Soldier. Noble. Archer. Champion. All that may bring a man glory, but first and foremost the adored son of proud parents who doted on him from the moment he was born. Their firstborn, their boy, their blue-eyed baby, not innocent for long and all too eager to kiss the girls and make them cry. He rides like a man, fights like a fury; it's no surprise that his mother gets little chance to hold him in her arms and enjoy her son. He wants to race, he wants to swim, he wants to hit the bullseye time after time and know that his name will be whispered in awe or roared by a crowd - he wants to know that he will be loved, because he was born to it.

And even fighting for king and country, he's still selfish. He relishes the clap on the shoulder or clasped hand that signifies success and promises that those whispers and roars will soon be ringing in his ears. Sometimes he misses green and soil and the gleam of pretty eyes in the dark, those things that promise him home. He never dwells for long, though - men who are beloved make their homes where they lie, be it on the desert sand or between every set of silken sheets from Tripoli to Jaffa. Men love him, women love him, and he is a comrade and a brother and a devil and a charmer and never has to pay his dues. He draws the bowstring back to his chin, never feels the unexpected; dismisses dreams of a skirt flickering around a corner, a door closing in his face. He rode to war on his destrier and never looked back, never let it take him down a peg but only make a man out of a boy because that's what suits him best, and his name is chanted on the victory fields of Acre.

If home is where the heart is, home lies within his chest and beats steadily with nary a flicker of emotion. Home can be reshaped into a house and hearth and lintel, but when that home is taken and the promise - champion, saviour - beckons, home drives adrenaline through his veins and drives him onward. He gathers a merry band - of course he does - because they love him. He loves that kind of glory too, the kind that comes from taking pleasure in feeding the hungry or healing the sick. He begins to feel the pleasure of giving, but sometimes it seems as if this only comes because chances for receiving are few and far between. The pretty eyes gleam beautiful in a familiar face, and the beautiful mouth speaks unfamiliar words: words like no. Idiot. Imbecile. Fool. Child. Go.

And he begins to fumble.

The words begin to slip as they tumble, sincerity somehow slipping through the mesh. A general never needs sincere words to call an army to his command, but somehow these words are being spoken and actually meaning something. His fingers slip on the bowstring and he misses, watching the beautiful mouth purse as the mill wheels turn round behind eyes it's somehow and suddenly hard to fathom. He trips sometimes, stumbles sometimes, falls sometimes, goes off his game because he's worried or jealous or angry. He begins to realise that he has a problem somewhat similar to the problem others experience around him -

Love.

Soldier: no good, little boys playing at being men. Noble: no help, a title no longer fit for use. Archer: if he's not Cupid, then that certainly won't help. Champion: a champion who glories in his gains, at war with a silent companion? Beautiful eyes beneath a mask, a secret smile sometimes; where is home anymore? It doesn't feel like it's in his chest.

So the world changes, and no longer revolves around him, and stolen moments become more slippery to catch, more tricky to hold onto and more difficult to pin down and understand. _The heart has reasons that reason cannot know_. He watches at windows, presses his hands to stones where her fingers have rested. He tries to charm, tries to flirt, tries to be the boy he once was. She's not that girl anymore, but she's not a different person. She's a comrade, a partner in crime, a...a what? A silent, never consummated, never spoken of something, promised to another and making him sick - _love_sick?

And Robin Hood, Robin of Locksley, Robin de Marian in deed if not in word becomes rock. Strong place. Protector. Friend. He learns to slow down and take in the world around him, to take in the green and the soil and the beautiful bright eyes behind the mask of the Nightwatchman. He learns lover. Partner. Companion. Other half. He closes beautiful eyes and kisses beautiful lips, learns not to need the awed whispers or the crowd's roars. He just needs her face in all that melee - her face with its slow smile of triumph and her steady blue eyes, a home for the wasteland of his heart and the only love that has ever really mattered.


End file.
